Being Skeptical of Green

Saturday

Nov 24, 2007 at 12:01 AM

Consumers who think they can help improve the environment should be careful when it comes to their purchasing decisions and avoid relying on labels.

EVERY retail trend has its excesses. In the late 90s, the natural supplement fad reached a zenith (or nadir) with the introduction of potato chips laced with St. John’s wort, said to be a natural cure for depression.

The newest trend is “green.” But consumers who think they can help improve the environment should be as careful as a snack-craving depressive when it comes to their purchasing decisions and avoid relying on labels. Not everything called “green” is going to do much for the environment, according to a report issued this week by a marketing firm, TerraChoice Environmental Marketing (terrachoice.com).

Titled “The Six Sins of Greenwashing,” the report is based on a study of 1,018 consumer products that make environmental claims. Of those, according to the report, “all but one made claims that are demonstrably false or that risk misleading intended audiences.”

The firm said, for example, that the “sin of vagueness” is committed when insecticides are sold as “chemical free.” In fact, the report points out, “nothing is chemical-free.” Also watch out for “nontoxic,” “all natural” and “earth friendly.”

The “Sin of Irrelevance” shows up, the report said, when a claim essentially means nothing. Many products, like oven cleaners, are sold as being free of chlorofluorocarbons, but CFCs have been banned for three decades.

And the report said the “Sin of the Lesser of Two Evils” applied to products like “organic tobacco” and “green” herbicides.

These and the other “sins” mean “both that the individual consumer has been misled and that the potential environmental benefit of his or her purchase has been squandered,” the report concludes.

Martin LaMonica of CNET News.com’s Green Tech blog (news.com) said some of the sins “may sound like nitpicking,” adding, “If manufacturers use more recycled material or make an effort to use benign chemicals, they should be able to label their products as such.” Still, he said, more information is usually better.

GOOGLE’S FUTURE Paul La Monica, who writes the Media Biz blog for CNNMoney.com, predicted that Google’s stock could be worth more than Microsoft’s by 2010 and that the search company’s market capitalization could surpass $500 billion. (It’s less than half that now.)

He extrapolated from long-term estimates of earnings growth for both Google and Microsoft. “One would think that Google, eventually, would see its growth slow due to nothing more than the law of large numbers,” he wrote. But some stock researchers agreed with his projections.

BRIGHTSPOT GOES DARK Brightspot.tv, one of a number of companies that pay viewers to watch advertisements, has suspended operations.

“Brightspot was one of a clutch of companies looking to turn consumer ad avoidance into a business opportunity by letting users choose when to watch ads,” wrote Brian Morrissey of AdWeek. Aaron Martens, Brightspot’s chief executive, confirmed the situation in an e-mail message to AdWeek. “Advertisers have been relatively slow to adopt new models when it’s so clear they absolutely need to change their thinking,” he wrote.

“The question remains whether the lure of compensation, which in many cases works out to minimum wage for consumers’ time, is enough to ensure their participation,” Mr. Morrissey wrote.

WHAT IT ISN’T “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” is a well-known brand of butter substitute. Robyn Lee of the Serious Eats blog said she had “assumed that this was the only product that used the word butter to market its superiority over other butter substitutes through its fascinating ability to be mistaken for real butter.” But she found several others (seriouseats.com). They range from the economically named “Butter It’s Not” to the Zen koanlike “Could It Be Butter?” to the mystical “What, Not Butter!” DAN MITCHELL

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